This invention relates to cut crop pickup devices of the type used on forage harvesters, combines, and the like for picking up cut crops and, more particularly, to the tine reel and crop stripper elements thereof which are provided with a novel configuration to effect smoother, more positive handling of the crops as they are raised from the ground to the platform of the machine.
In pickups of the type described, an overshot tine reel having a plurality of sets of tines spaced along a transverse axis is mounted forwardly of the frame of the device. Fore-and-aft extending crop strippers attach to the upper and lower portions of the frame and loop around the tine reel between the sets of tines. In previous machines, the forward portion of these strippers is generally disposed at a uniform radius about the axis of the tine reel. Although cams are sometimes used to control the attitude of the tines relative to the reel, the tines generally extend to their outermost position across the forward portion of the pickup. The result then, with or without a cam, is that the exposed length of the tines from the stripper is uniform across the forward portion of the strippers up to the point where, due to the cam or the stripper-reel geometry, the exposed length of the tines recedes to release the crop as the tines begin to pass around the back side of the reel. As the pickup machine travels forwardly, the radial shape of the forward portion of these prior art strippers tends to roll light short crops into lumps and bunches causing erratic crop flow through the device. The radial shape also tends to cause long stems of heavy tall crops to stand vertically, disrupting crop flow. Both conditions are undesirable.
In U.S. Pat. No. 2,682,743 to Hintz, a somewhat similar stripper profile is used in connection with a lateral gathering pickup device. However, it will be noted that the lower forward portion of the stripper is disposed at a uniform radius about the axis of the tine reel and that the exposed length of tine in the upper forward portion of the reel is the same or less than the exposure in the lower forward portion of the reel. Thus, the Hintz machine would not produce the more positive crop handling resulting from our design.